Your brain is always changing, from death till the moment you die.  Neuroscience calls this change in your brain neuroplasticity. Today Robert J. Marks discusses the brain’s ability to adapt and change throughout our lives with Yuri Danilov.

Show Notes

• 01:00 | Introducing Yuri Danilov, Senior Scientist, Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
• 03:00 | Unmasking and opening side roads in the brain
• 03:30 | Louis Braille and the invention of braille
• 05:00 | “Neuroplasticity” and the heretic Paul Bach-y-Rita
• 07:00 | Entropy, chaos, order, and adaptation of the brain
• 09:00 | Desynchronization with age
• 10:30 | Two brain changes that happen over time
• 12:00 | Exercising the brain and the myth of losing neurons
• 13:00 | The loss of myelin that insulates nerve cell axons
• 14:20 | How to exercise (not hydrate) the brain
• 14:50 | Two cages, two rats, and the importance of brain stimulation
• 16:15 | Structural versus functional plasticity
• 17:00 | Muscle memory, or the lack thereof
• 18:00 | American football and the effects of concussive injuries

Additional Resources

• Yuri Danilov’s papers at Academia.edu and Google Scholar
• Who Was Louis Braille? at Encyclopædia Britannica
• Paul Bach-Y-Rita at ResearchGate
• Mark Rosenzweig’s rat brain study at Themantic Education
• League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis at PBS